How would you like to handle the "gap" between LFR and Normal raiding?

[Deleted]

So generally speaking you can't say what bosses are the real roadblocks in heroic. You are listing how many guilds fail to move from 4 heroic bosses down to 5 heroic bosses down.
The only part of the spectrum where your logic might work is at the very end.

Sadly, boss progression is not linear in heroic.

Regardless, it is higher between every step on the way on the heroic progression. Which would mean that maybe boss X have a lower value but that means boss Y would have a higher value.

This is the best way to count heroic progression as it still shows how many bosses each guild have killed.

If you are really that bothered about it you can count the average instead. Which is very obviously higher in heroic.

---------- Post added 2013-05-29 at 05:03 PM ----------

Both you and the person you are quoting are making abusive generalisations and exaggerations. I hope you're proud, both of you.

I am not really joking or exaggarting. We had people claiming "Oh, I killed LK25HC", forgetting to mention that it was 3 months ago. They do not think we bother checking it up with 1 mouse click on their armory.

We had a guy applying just today that still had 3 green items on him and unenchanted gear.
Several people have expressed bad feelings towards having to actually write an apply.
Today we actually had to first guy in weeks that actually asked us before we asked him if he should make an apply somewhere.

We have seen dpsers pushing only 50-80k dps in ToT gear.

Healers... oh god... dont get me started on healers... Where did they all go?

So no, I am not really exaggerating at all. Recruitment is a horrible, horrible state right now.

[Firebert]

We expect our recruits to have about 510~ item level. Even brought in people that were 480 ilvl though. It is easier to gear someone up than to skill someone up. Rather take a good player with bad gear than a bad player with good gear.

You should be taking people that are around 463 item level and boosting them through T14N, then. Why? LFR is completely optional.

How do you guys judge skill?

If he cant join for 50% of the raids then what is the point in bringing him?

Because you're the one recruiting? Either you want to take players to fill the roster, or you don't want to take players to fill the roster. Not both.

You want to know that persones previous guilds why he left them. You do not want a player that leaves guilds after 2 weeks. Basically you want to know what kind of person that person is, does he fit into our guild both socially and in terms of raiding.

You wouldn't worry about having players leaving after two weeks if you lowered your entry requirements.

Any experience that is not current content is in my eyes worthless. We often invited people we no experience in current/previous tier but that had experience in WotLK/Cata. But then we of course check if that experience was done at an appropriate timeline. (no, killing LK HC after the cata patch was released in WotLK is not experience).

More exclusion...

As a guild with a tight schedule, you expect your raiders to show up. If they can not show up, you expect them to tell you so beforehand. As long as they can tell in advance "Hey, I cant come to the raid on sunday", it is fine. Just as long as it does not happen every raid. Also of course the reason for it. Some reasons are better than others.

Accidents never happen, raid times are perfect for everyone...

You do not expect people to spend all time reading up on their class. You expect people to know their class. That should not take several hours per day reading up on your class.

People play to enjoy themselves now, not be forced to go read spreadsheets before they can play with their friends.

---------- Post added 2013-05-29 at 06:10 PM ----------

So no, I am not really exaggerating at all. Recruitment is a horrible, horrible state right now.

There's a very easy solution.

Relax the entry requirements, and go back to T14, recruiting players straight out of Heroics and early LFR.

[schwank05]

Go back to wrath Raiding Model, Activated Hard-modes only none of this Heroic Crap. Give us separate lockouts, and revive Pugs and GDKP runs.

[Pua]

Sorry hun, I failed to see when you schooled me or when this argument has been crucified.

You are the one not able to reply, so I would claim you are the weakest link. I can counter your arguments, you cant counter mine.

So sorry, would have to say you are weakest link.

K thx bye.

You just keep telling yourself that, sweetie.

[Shahad]

Because you're the one recruiting? Either you want to take players to fill the roster, or you don't want to take players to fill the roster. Not both.

If they can't make your raid times, they should look for a group that does fit their times. Both parties will be happer for it.

You wouldn't worry about having players leaving after two weeks if you lowered your entry requirements.

That is simply not true. The players who get in likely need to be geared up by the group, having more people to gear up doesn't make someone leaving any less damaging.

Accidents never happen, raid times are perfect for everyone...

He specifically mentioned that missing here and there is okay, but missing nights consistently is not. Also, if raid times don't work for someone, they should get into a group that raids at times that are appropriate for them.

People play to enjoy themselves now, not be forced to go read spreadsheets before they can play with their friends.

I think knowing your class basically means being aware of your spells and what they do. Optimising the rotation to get an extra 1% dps isn't what is being asked. Essentially, it's playing with the mechanics the developpers intended you to use.

I am not really joking or exaggarting. We had people claiming "Oh, I killed LK25HC", forgetting to mention that it was 3 months ago. They do not think we bother checking it up with 1 mouse click on their armory.

We had a guy applying just today that still had 3 green items on him and unenchanted gear.
Several people have expressed bad feelings towards having to actually write an apply.
Today we actually had to first guy in weeks that actually asked us before we asked him if he should make an apply somewhere.

We have seen dpsers pushing only 50-80k dps in ToT gear.

Healers... oh god... dont get me started on healers... Where did they all go?

So no, I am not really exaggerating at all. Recruitment is a horrible, horrible state right now.

Sure, recruitment took a nose-dive. But in my opinion that is because of this LFR/Normal gap. There's no real place to skill up as a new player. Players who clear Normal bosses expect decent raiders, so that's a no go. LFR and dungeons are worthless. Pugs will kick you for not being decent unles they themselves are bad. If a new player wants to learn, he'll have to endure unsuccesful pugs or guild hop from bad guild to less bad guilds that are little more than pugs anyway. If no content prepares anyone for raiding, can you really blame them for thinking they are ready for it?

[Deleted]

You just keep telling yourself that, sweetie.

Well, you are the one that got 0 arguments. So yeah, I will keep telling myself that darling.

[Danski117]

"Gradually increasing debuff that nerfs the raid over time"

I haven't read the whole 11 pages, so this may have been said, but doesn't the gear do this naturally. Even if you are struggling and farming say 4-5/12 normal, you are by now 415-420+ and in much better shape than when you were 495 trying to get by. If your group is all 415+ and your still struggling in the first couple wings...the problem is not the difficulty and/or the nerfs. At that point, your missing a mechanic in the fight(s).

I'm all for 10m being easier with lower loot, as long as 25m was a different lockout. This would be a nightmare however with lfr now. If you were doing heroics and 500+ going into ToT, you were all set. If you were 10-16/16 normal clearing and in 490s, you struggled at the start of ToT, making lfr necessary for the minimal upgrades to push you over the hump and make up for the shortcomings that left you in normal modes in 5.1 in the first place. As a person who has gone more casual from hc simply due to time, doing lfr, 10m and hoping to pug/raid 25m also seems too time consuming and probably to most, the reason I feel that we would never see that happen.

[fangless]

But what about during T14? There was no easier older content to run in lieu of Normals then.

Because it's the base tier, designed to be done in heroic blues? 5 Mans were your easier older content.

[Shahad]

Because it's the base tier, designed to be done in heroic blues? 5 Mans were your easier older content.

But five-mans are(currently) neither fun, engaging, difficult or a preparation for raiding. That's the point I was illustrating in that post. You can't justify Normals being too hard for worse guilds because they can run the nerfed last tier if there is no last tier. Therefore locking these guilds out of content for the entire first tier of the expansion. Same thing would apply to the last tier, since it won't be nerfed until there's a few months left to MoP and the content won't really matter anyway.

[Osmeric]

Because it's the base tier, designed to be done in heroic blues? 5 Mans were your easier older content.

I believe the intent was to put lesser guilds into LFR, not back into heroic 5 mans. Of course this led the people in those guilds to wonder just what they were getting for being in their guilds. LFR/LFD + daily grind led to not much time for (or interest in) group content with the guild.

[Deleted]

You should be taking people that are around 463 item level and boosting them through T14N, then. Why? LFR is completely optional.

We actually have. But why should we bother going back to boost someone that we do not even know is a good player? When we brought in players that we know, damn this guy is a good player, we have taken him back and geared him up.

Though why take that step for Randal the Random. Why bring in a guy that got 0 raiding experience, 0 gear and does not appear to have any knowledge of his class, take the time of 9 other people that gains nothing of it to gear up Randal with the hopes that he turns out to be good?

Instead Randal can gear up his own character as it is not that hard to find T14 pugs and T15 pugs.

It is not up to the recruiter to show the recruitee why to join the guild, the recruitee needs to show why to bring him. If he shows no knowledge of his class, raiding and gear, why bring him?

How do you guys judge skill?

This is a tricky one. Generally a combination of previous guilds, previous raid experience, how well he has gemmed/reforged. We always check for old logs from that player. When in doubt, bring him with for 5 mans / challenge mode / lfr / trial raid and just test him out.

Because you're the one recruiting? Either you want to take players to fill the roster, or you don't want to take players to fill the roster. Not both.

You want people that fit into that roster ofc. I would never apply to a guild when I know I can not make their raid times.
Again, it is up to the raider to fit into the guild, not the guild to fit the raider. If the guild doesnt fit you, do not apply.

You wouldn't worry about having players leaving after two weeks if you lowered your entry requirements.

How does this make any sense? If they get in they get in, that has nothing to do with the entry requirements. People are leaving because they want to 'trade up', so a lot of people join a guild, get carried and geared up and then apply for the next guild. This is something you want to avoid as a guild of course.

More exclusion...

Yes. Of course. You check previous raiding experience. The less you have the worse it looks. Is it any different applying for anything in real life.

Accidents never happen, raid times are perfect for everyone...

Accidents do happen, I entirely agree with that. Accidents happen more often for some peopel than others. When accidents happen once a week, that is not substainable. Again, raid times. Join a guild that fits your times. Do not expect the guild to fit after yours.
Do you even realise how douchy you sound right now?
You expect 9/24 other people to fit their time schedule after yours. And maybe "sorry guys, my friends asked me to go out for a drink at the bar so I can raid tonight!" making the other 9/24 people not able to raid because of you not being there.
To me it is not even up for debate that it is your duty as a raider to fit your times to your guilds raid. Not the other way around.
Anything else is very egocentric and bad mannered.

There's a very easy solution.

Relax the entry requirements, and go back to T14, recruiting players straight out of Heroics and early LFR.

Why relax the entry requirements? Why bring in raiders that are far worse than the other raiders in a guild? That makes 0 sense. Those players can apply to guilds less progressed with raiders that are more on their level. Like wtf, do you even hear what you are implying?
"Yeah guys, lets stop our ToT H raiding to go back to trade chat, attempt to find some good player even though you have no way of telling who is good and bad and go back into T14 and gear him up."
How well do you think that flies?

Again my point is, it is 10x harder now than a few years ago to find a player that is a good fit into a guild as raiders have gotten worse and are less inclined to put effort into their playing.

[Deleted]

We actually have. But why should we bother going back to boost someone that we do not even know is a good player? When we brought in players that we know, damn this guy is a good player, we have taken him back and geared him up.

Though why take that step for Randal the Random. Why bring in a guy that got 0 raiding experience, 0 gear and does not appear to have any knowledge of his class, take the time of 9 other people that gains nothing of it to gear up Randal with the hopes that he turns out to be good?
.

because you are the one who wants HC level raiders.

Why should everyone else have their game made pointlessly difficult so a few thousand HC hardcores can have a slightly easier time recruiting? Pure entitlement thinking!

[Firebert]

That is simply not true. The players who get in likely need to be geared up by the group, having more people to gear up doesn't make someone leaving any less damaging.

This is countered by the fact that there are thousands more people that need gearing up than you couldn't possibly not replace within 2 weeks.

I think knowing your class basically means being aware of your spells and what they do. Optimising the rotation to get an extra 1% dps isn't what is being asked. Essentially, it's playing with the mechanics the developpers intended you to use.

So, FFB spam on my Arcane Mage is fine because it's something the devs intended me to use (it procs Arcane Missiles and replaces Scorch)?

Sure, recruitment took a nose-dive. But in my opinion that is because of this LFR/Normal gap. There's no real place to skill up as a new player. Players who clear Normal bosses expect decent raiders, so that's a no go. LFR and dungeons are worthless. Pugs will kick you for not being decent unles they themselves are bad. If a new player wants to learn, he'll have to endure unsuccesful pugs or guild hop from bad guild to less bad guilds that are little more than pugs anyway. If no content prepares anyone for raiding, can you really blame them for thinking they are ready for it?

I think the LFR-Normal gap has nothing to do with the reason recruitment took a nose-dive. The attitude of those that are raiding is self-harming. Blizzard fixed this self-harming attitude that was killing raiding (that is, the percentage of raiders that saw content was drastically falling) by rushing in and introducing LFR. If Blizzard really care about Normal raiding participation then they'll go the same way: LFR10N.

[Deleted]

because you are the one who wants HC level raiders.

Why should everyone else have their game made pointlessly difficult so a few thousand HC hardcores can have a slightly easier time recruiting? Pure entitlement thinking!

Did you even read what you replied to?

It is Randal Random that wants to join a heroic guild, it is his job to be on par with what you expect from a heroic raider.

To presume that 9/24 other people should carry, that is entitlement thinking. Not thinking that the 1 new player should be on par with the others in the guild.

Are you honestly that full of yourself that you think 1 player should make the life suck for another 9? You got some entitlement issues.

[Shahad]

So, FFB spam on my Arcane Mage is fine because it's something the devs intended me to use (it procs Arcane Missiles and replaces Scorch)?

The devs don't intend FFB spam. The core abilities tab(although kinda barebones and outdated) is a good indication of what the Devs intend. Most of the time you can figure out the priority system yourself just from reading your spec's passives.

Again my point is, it is 10x harder now than a few years ago to find a player that is a good fit into a guild as raiders have gotten worse and are less inclined to put effort into their playing.

You get worse applicants because of the LFR/Normal gap. Try to see it through the eyes of a freshly dinged new player. You've been levelling in LFD most of the time and now you see LFR. You go in, see content, get gear and overall you think you're pretty good at this because of how easy it is. Then you try to get into a Normal guild because that is the progression path set for you by blizzard and it's very obvious to see. Either you get denied from every good guild or you wipe with every bad guild/pug. What do you do? You tell yourself you're not cut for that and either leave or stay in LFR as you believe that is your appropriate difficulty. Or, you endure the whole thing and guild-hop until you get somewhere decent, but that's not a reflex a new player would have.

Ultimately, having the current raid of the tier available with a 10% nerf would help worse guilds progress and carry these new guys. Once they are done with Entry mode, they will either want to progress into Normal(for which they have now been prepared) or stay in Entry mode. And once he's not satisfied with Normal, he'll try Heroic. This is a much more fluid difficulty progression path and I think it would ultimately be healthy for the game.

[Otimus]

This is countered by the fact that there are thousands more people that need gearing up than you couldn't possibly not replace within 2 weeks.


So, FFB spam on my Arcane Mage is fine because it's something the devs intended me to use (it procs Arcane Missiles and replaces Scorch)?


I think the LFR-Normal gap has nothing to do with the reason recruitment took a nose-dive. The attitude of those that are raiding is self-harming. Blizzard fixed this self-harming attitude that was killing raiding (that is, the percentage of raiders that saw content was drastically falling) by rushing in and introducing LFR. If Blizzard really care about Normal raiding participation then they'll go the same way: LFR10N.

I agree with that last statement. The general raiding and PVE community as a whole is highly exclusionary to a fault, where it's near impossible for anyone new to really get much of anywhere. People deny this, but you back them into a corner, they'll essentially admit it :x Then act like it's not a problem.

....and then complain about the lack of raiders, and demand absurd things, like the removal of LFR.

If anything is harming WoW's raiding base, it's that that normal raids are made for raiders. People who have been raiding, and LFR is for everyone else. People who don't think that creates a gap are kind of warped in their view on things. The game pretty much sets up new players for disappointment and failure, and teaches them sort of, how to play "wrong".

But anyways, I think It'd probably help a bit if they'd let guilds manually select the LFR difficulty when they do raids, have the LFR quality loot, LFR difficulty, but the normal loot distribution rules any other actual raid would have, and no determination debuff. I think a large amount of the people vocal about this stuff just want stuff to do with their guild, that's only with their guild, but don't exactly want a tier of challenge that's not what they were acclimated to while getting to the end of the game.

[Deleted]

Did you even read what you replied to?=

Yeah.

It is Randal Random that wants to join a heroic guild, it is his job to be on par with what you expect from a heroic raider.

No. If you want raiders to your own spec, you should be making them.

To presume that 9/24 other people should carry, that is entitlement thinking. Not thinking that the 1 new player should be on par with the others in the guild.

You are asking several million other players to carry your raid.

Are you honestly that full of yourself that you think 1 player should make the life suck for another 9? You got some entitlement issues.

Are you honestly so full of yourself that you think several million other people should have a less than stellar experience just so your own raid group can recruit slightly easier.

Pure entitlement thinking from you.

[Firebert]

Why relax the entry requirements? Why bring in raiders that are far worse than the other raiders in a guild? That makes 0 sense. Those players can apply to guilds less progressed with raiders that are more on their level. Like wtf, do you even hear what you are implying?

Yes. I'm implying that as subs have dropped, the amount of raiders that you want have dropped by around the same percentage. As such, you're being squeezed by the end of the bell curve of players and skill/gear/etc. There's no raiders left to recruit. The only remaining options are:

*to move closer to the average and fill up the roster,
*poach players from other guilds within your specified required area under the bell curve,
*move server, or
*disband.

Your choice (at least until the subs pick up).

"Yeah guys, lets stop our ToT H raiding to go back to trade chat, attempt to find some good player even though you have no way of telling who is good and bad and go back into T14 and gear him up."
How well do you think that flies?

"Yeah guys, lets stop our ToT H raiding and go back to T14 with these new guys, we need more people for the roster", or,
"Yeah guys, lets start talking to players in other guilds tonight and get them to come to our guild to raid with us instead of their guild", or,
"Yeah guys, lets all go to this server because our current server is dead, you're footing your own transfers though", or
"Yeah guys, lets stop our ToT H raiding permanently, there's no-one left anywhere to fill the roster and we're too good to take anyone less than us".

The only thing I think will go down well is option 1. Option 2 is just terrible for the guild's reputation, option 3 is just asking for the guild to split anyway, and option 4 is just a quick-and-dirty way to get to the same conclusion as option 3.

So, yeah. I think it'd go down really well!

[fangless]

But five-mans are(currently) neither fun, engaging, difficult or a preparation for raiding. That's the point I was illustrating in that post. You can't justify Normals being too hard for worse guilds because they can run the nerfed last tier if there is no last tier. Therefore locking these guilds out of content for the entire first tier of the expansion. Same thing would apply to the last tier, since it won't be nerfed until there's a few months left to MoP and the content won't really matter anyway.

But the first tier wasn't hard, so you can't really say the players had no where to go back to in preparation. If you couldn't do T14, which many players did in heroic blues, then... I'd argue that raiding just isn't for you. Flat out.

[Firebert]

The devs don't intend FFB spam. The core abilities tab(although kinda barebones and outdated) is a good indication of what the Devs intend. Most of the time you can figure out the priority system yourself just from reading your spec's passives.

Any spell can proc Arcane Missiles, so FFB is intended. Arcane Missiles is in the core abilities tab.

Mage bombs aren't in the core abilities tab, and hence aren't ever supposed to be used.

Pick one.

Ultimately, having the current raid of the tier available with a 10% nerf would help worse guilds progress and carry these new guys. Once they are done with Entry mode, they will either want to progress into Normal(for which they have now been prepared) or stay in Entry mode. And once he's not satisfied with Normal, he'll try Heroic. This is a much more fluid difficulty progression path and I think it would ultimately be healthy for the game.

Having an LFR10N mode that sits between LFR and Normal would get far more exposure and would (hopefully) give an achievement that raiding guilds would actually value, such that recruitment would be a whole lot easier.